EGOS 2018 in Tallinn is special in many regards. One of the ways in which this colloquium is (somewhat) special relates to the portfolio of sub-themes: for the first time in several years, there won’t be a sub-theme that explicitly relates to practice-based strategy research. However, this does not mean that the portfolio of sub-themes does not invite SAP-related research – quite the contrary. Here, we provide a short overview of sub-themes that display interest in SAP research.

Sub-Themes Relating to Practice Theories

Sub-Theme 48: More to Talk About: Unexpected Roles of Language in Organizing

• Convenors: Jeffrey Loewenstein, William Ocasio, Eero Vaara
• “In short, we seek research that explicitly seeks to fit together different aspects of language so as to develop more innovative and more integrated understandings of organizations and organizing. Surprise us!”
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Sub-Theme 53: The Translation of Ideas and Practices: Exemplary Studies and Developments

• Convenors: Dimitrios Spyridonidis, Davide Nicolini, Jean-Louis Denis
• “The aim of this sub-theme is therefore to bring together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical traditions who share a broad interest in the advancement of the study of ‘translation’. We want to compare approaches, examine when and how they make a difference in practice, and generate cross fertilization, creative abrasion and debate. In this sub-theme we invite in particular submissions from scholars who study translation empirically (not exclusively) and use the concept as way to approach organizational phenomena.”
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Sub-Theme 58: Calling the Weberian Pokerface: On the Affordances of Play in Organizations

• Convenors: Mikko Vesa, Harald Warmelink, Janne Tienari
• “[T]o understand how play, games and organization interact we should examine more in detail what sorts of playful or gamelike affordances we can find in different organizational contexts. It is time to call organization’s Weberian pokerface.”
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Standing Working Groups/Sub-Themes Involving SAP Affiliates

SWG 02: Understanding Organizing in Terms of Digital Media Technology: Histories, Presents, Futures

• Convenors: Robin Holt, Maha Shaikh, Mike Zundel
• “Arguably, as a field, organization studies has only just started to problematize the fundamental inter-relation of digital technology, media and organizing. This sub-theme, the first meeting of the EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG on Digital Technology, Media and Organization) invites submissions that bring together different strands of research in the fields of science and technology studies (e.g. Law, 2000), information systems theory (e.g. Yoo et al., 2010; Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015; Newell & Marabelli, 2015; Sundararajan et al., 2013); sociological research on media technology, data and algorithms (Gillespie et al., 2014); materiality, space and architecture (Leonardi et al., 2012; Martin, 2003; Thrift, 2011; Whyte, 2013) and related engagements with digitalization and the materiality of organizing (e.g. Jones 2014; Leonardi et al., 2012).”
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SWG 03: Routines, Stability and Change in Organizations and Beyond

• Convenors: Katharina Dittrich, Martha S. Feldman, Brian T. Pentland
• “In this sub-theme, we invite scholars to consider the implications of routine dynamics for stability and change in institutions, culture, networks, organizational fields and other large scale assemblages.”
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SWG 07: Doing Process Research: Performativity in the Unfolding Actions of Organizing

• Convenors: Barbara Simpson, Nancy Harding, Viviane Sergi
• “In this sub-theme we are inviting empirical accounts that use any of the various theoretical perspectives on performativity to document organizing and organizational issues. Coming from a process perspective, our interest in performativity is in better understanding unexpected movements in the becoming of our continuously emerging worlds (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002), the surprising ways in which conversation constitutes and is constituted in organizing (Mead, 1934; Putnam & Nicotera, 2009), how what is hardly known may, all unawares, enter into the becoming of organizing (Bollas, 1995), what journeys emerge out of dynamic interplays between the flow of knowing and what is already known (Dewey & Bentley, 1949[1960]), how non-sentient material actors may agentively intervene (Barad, 2007), and indeed anything that the rational, Enlightened actor might disavow as having no part in social process, but which nevertheless hovers close and inserts itself into the intra-actions of performing agents (Barad, 2007).”
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Sub-Theme 14: Exploring Start-up Programs as New Organizational Forms

• Convenors: Israel (Issy) Drori, Jochen Koch, Mike Wright
• “Almost every bigger company is now running at least one of those programs and the same applies to the most part of the universities and other private or public organizations worldwide such as municipalities, NGOs, and other academic institutions. Whereas this phenomenon has attracted sustainable resonance in some fields of research, especially in entrepreneurship (Wright & Drori, 2017), organization scholars have remained relatively silent so far. This sub-theme is dedicated to overcome this reservation and to put forward an organizational perspective and an organizational understanding of these phenomena.”
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Sub-Theme 33: Heuristics: Novel Insights into Organizing and Organizations

• Convenors: Wolfgang H. Güttel, Moritz Loock, Madeleine Rauch
• “Within this, heuristics, as a micro-model of individual cognition and the organization-specific processes of sharing heuristics across individuals and levels, have been explored. […] We are interested in work that builds on these ideas and further links it to organization studies.”
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Sub-Theme 38: Social Studies of Finance: Implications for a Financialized Economy

• Convenors: Paula Jarzabkowski, Emilio Marti, Daniel Beunza
• “Scholars within the social studies of finance […] still need to draw out the implications that their research has for the “big questions” (Jarzabkowski et al., 2015: p. 185) that arise around the financialized economy that has emerged over the last 40 year. We […] [invite] research that link micro-level practices to macro-level implications.”
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Sub-Theme 43: Multimodal Methods in Organization Research

• Convenors: Joep P. Cornelissen, Curtis LeBaron, Matthias Wenzel
• “The aim of this sub-theme is to provide a forum for engaging discussions that continue and advance debates on the use of multimodal methods in organization research. Therefore, we invite papers that present surprising results based on multimodal data and unpack the complex practice of using multimodal methods in organization research.”
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